Payment and settlement statistics

We publish updates on the availability of our real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service monthly and the value and volumes of transactions quarterly.

RTGS total settlements £692,174,000,000

Daily average in Q3 2023

Average daily RTGS settlement values and volumes

 

Q4 2022

Q1 2023

Q2 2023

Q3 2023

YTD 2023

CHAPS values (£mn)

£434,146

£388,347

£374,237

£346,837

£369,713

CHAPS volumes

206,421

200,104

210,089

201,604

203,801

CREST DvP values (£mn)

£377,834

£349,658

£346,299

£334,743

£343,509

CREST DvP volumes

13,842

13,083

13,040

12,108

12,737

FPS net values (£mn)

£1,771

£1,688

£1,852

£1,855

£1,797

Bacs net values (£mn)

£4,931

£5,002

£5,394

£4,917

£5,098

Link net values (£mn)

£232

£205

£242

£221

£222

Cheque imaging net values (£mn)

£55

£68

£52

£56

£59

Visa Europe net values (£mn)

£2,247

£2,138

£2,345

£2,180

£2,218

Mastercard values (£mn)

£1,288

£1,311

£1,477

£1,366

£1,382

PEXA values (£mn)

£0

£0

£0

£0

£0

Total settlement values (£mn)

£822,504

£748,419

£731,899

£692,174

£724,000

All values are rounded to the nearest million and a zero value denotes an amount under £0.5mn.

Further CHAPS statistics

Link statistics

UK Finance – card spending data

Pay.UK statistics including Bacs, CHAPS, Faster Payments and Cheque Imaging

  • RTGS settles individual payments in CHAPS, the same-day electronic funds transfer service for high-value sterling payments.

    CHAPS direct participants can choose:

    1. To settle payments immediately (subject to available liquidity) as ‘urgent’ CHAPS payments or

    2. To accept some delay in settlement to improve liquidity efficiency and submit them as ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS payments.

    The choice of which CHAPS settlement service to use is entirely at the discretion of the participant. Non-urgent settlement is usually available from 06:00 until 17:30, after which outstanding non-urgent payments are auto-promoted to urgent. Participants may choose to reschedule individual CHAPS payments from non-urgent to urgent, and vice versa, until the point of settlement. On average, non-urgent payments settle around eight minutes after submission into RTGS. The processes in the RTGS infrastructure to support these two CHAPS services are run in parallel and the availability of each is reported separately.

    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST

    These functions are required to facilitate transfers of central bank money, arising from securities transactions between CREST participants, across the accounts held by CREST settlement banks at the Bank of England. This relies on technical links between the Bank’s RTGS infrastructure and the CREST infrastructure, operated by Euroclear. A period when CREST settlement is unavailable due to an incident with RTGS or the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST is recorded. However, CREST settlement can continue to operate even if RTGS is unavailable, by using contingency procedures.

    4. Net interbank settlement of retail payment systems

    Seven sterling retail payment systems (Bacs, cheque-based Image Clearing System, FPS, LINK, Mastercard Europe, PEXA and Visa Europe) settle their net obligations, arising from customer transactions, at defined points in time during the RTGS settlement day. A delay to the execution of these net settlements that results from an RTGS incident is recorded. RTGS does not provide the infrastructure for the exchange (or ‘clearing’) of individual payment instructions in these payment systems, so the availability of that system to its end-users is not dependent on RTGS availability.

    5. RTGS Enquiry Link is the online graphical user interface (GUI) that holders of a reserves or settlement account use to manage their accounts. CHAPS participants also use this GUI for CHAPS payment queue management (the ‘central scheduler’). Any period where it is not available during the RTGS settlement day is recorded.

    Until 17 June 2016, the CHAPS settlement day was 6am to 4.20pm.

  • 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
    CHAPS values (£mn) £254,489 £284,591 £277,229 £268,615 £270,400 £298,710 £333,661 £330,095 £329,671  £361,844
    		 £341,171  £394,572
    CHAPS volumes 135,555 134,665 138,245 144,353 148,412 154,006 165,285 191,788 192,292  175,346
    		 189,539  203,538
    CREST DvP values (£mn) £322,118 £293,293 £303,717 £274,257 £240,480 £220,970 £270,129 £314,193 £342,119  £382,440
    		 £371,679  £374,307
    CREST DvP volumes 6,859 7,325 8,388 9,050 9,391 10,883 12,063 12,099 11,760  12,750  13,154 13,947 
    FPS net values (£mn)
    		 £188 £502 £586 £606 £663 £677 £775 £900 £1,026  £1,082
    		 £1,388  £1,649
    Bacs net values(£mn) £3,269 £3,190 £3,071 £3,122 £3,159 £3,193 £3,321 £3,686 £3,915 £4,508
    		 £4,611  £4,748
    C&CC net values (£mn) £220 £232 £211 £196 £190 £156 £137 £133 £161*  N/A
    		 N/A  N/A
    Link net values (£mn) £216 £235 £249 £271 £294 £315 £324 £318 £299  £213
    		 £210  £226
    Cheque imaging net values (£mn)                 £193  £77
    		 £65  £64
    Visa Europe net values (£mn) N/A N/A £1,144 £1,149 £1,425 £1,531 £1,776 £2,270 £2,363  £2,368
    		 £2,481  £2,357
    Mastercard values (£mn)                      £519  £835

    • All data are daily averages of transactions settled within the RTGS system.
    • CREST DvP activity in RTGS is measured by the debits applied to CREST settlement accounts at the end of each CREST settlement cycle, not the total volume or value of transactions in CREST itself.
    • Retail payment system (FPS, Bacs, cheque-based Image Clearing System, LINK, Mastercard Europe, Visa Europe) values represent the net value of each system’s settlement across RTGS. Net settlement for retail payment systems takes place within defined clearing cycles at specific points during the RTGS operating day. Therefore, no volumes data is available.
    • Visa Europe began settling net interbank obligations across RTGS in November 2013.
    • Mastercard Europe began settling net obligations across RTGS in July 2021

RTGS service availability statistics

Service availability

 Jan 2023 Feb 2023 Mar 2023  Apr 2023  May 2023 Jun 2023 Jul 2023 Aug 2023  Sep 2023  Oct 2023

1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement

 100%
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 97.59%  100% 99.77%

2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement

 100%
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.97%(e)
 97.49%  100% 99.76%

3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST

 100%(a)
 100% 100% 100% 100%(b) 100%(c) 100% 99.08%(f)  100%(g) 99.47%(h)

4. Delays to net interbank settlement of retail payment systems (minutes)

 0 0 0 0 0 21(d) 0 399  0 29

5. RTGS Enquiry Link

 100%
 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 97.72%  100% 100%

(a) Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 16 January. 

(b) Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 9 and 11 May.

(c) Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 6 June. 

(d) The Mastercard clearing was delayed by 21 minutes on 30 June due to technical issues at Mastercard.

(e) On 10 July, there was a 5 minute outage as a result of a technical SWIFT connectivity issue that impacted non-urgent CHAPS settlement.

(f) Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 7 August.

(g) Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 7 September.

(h) On 2 October, an EUI technical issue resulted in the DvP link between them and the Bank being unavailable for a total of 48 minutes. 

Summary of RTGS daily timetable

  • Service availability

    Jan
    2022

    Feb
    2022

    Mar
    2022

    Apr
    2022

    May
    2022

    Jun
    2022

    Jul
    2022

    Aug
    2022

    Sep
    2022

    Oct
    2022

    Nov
    2022

    Dec
    2022

    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement

    99.93%*

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    99.96%******

    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement

    99.93%*

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    99.96%******

    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%****

    100%

    100%*****

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    4. Delays to net interbank settlement of retail payment systems (minutes)

    0

    0

    33**

    0

    360***

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    0

    5. RTGS Enquiry Link

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    100%

    * On 6 January, there was a 10 minute outage as a result of a technical issue at SWIFT that impacted RTGS.

    **The Mastercard clearing was delayed by 20 minutes on 14 March and 13 minutes on 15 March due to technical issues at Mastercard.

    ***On 18 May, planned testing with the Faster Payments System (FPS) failed for technical reasons. As a result, two FPS clearings were delayed, by 270 minutes and 90 minutes respectively.

    ****Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on Friday 17 June (which required a Non Standard CREST Closure at the end of the day).

    *****Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 30 August

    ******On 8 December, there was a 6 minute outage as a result of a technical SWIFT connectivity issue that impacted CHAPS settlement.

    Service availability Jan
    2021         		Feb
    2021         		Mar
    2021         		Apr
    2021         		May
    2021         		Jun
    2021         		Jul
    2021         		Aug
    2021         		Sept
    2021         		Oct
    2021         		Nov
    2021         		Dec
    2021
    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.97%*** 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 99.96% 100% 100% 99.97% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 98%* 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    4. Delays to net interbank settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0 0 0 0 38** 0 161**** 135***** 32****** 0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

    *On 24 February 2021 a technical failure occurred on the link between the Bank of England and the CREST system at the start of the operational day. An established contingency procedure was invoked, enabling the Bank to provide start of day liquidity for CREST settlement. A reconciliation break on one of the accounts led to a further delay whilst the cause was identified and resolved, at which point CREST settlement resumed. CHAPS settlement was unaffected. 

    **The Faster Payments System (FPS) clearing was delayed due to a technical issue which prevented the clearing message being sent to RTGS on time. Pay.UK’s (the operator of FPS) third party technology provider fixed the issue and the clearing settled at 17:43 (38 minutes late).

    ***On 20 July, following a connectivity issue on a network component hosted by a third party supplier of SWIFT, an RTGS matching cycle was interrupted requiring manual intervention to re-start it. This ultimately delayed CHAPS settlement by 5 minutes.

    **** The MasterCard clearing was delayed by a total of 34 minutes on 11th August due to a delayed settlement file transfer via SWIFT. They also encountered an additional 6 minute delay on 23rd August for which the root cause is being investigated. Additionally, ICS scheme clearing was delayed by 121 minutes on 19th August due to disruptions in access portal connectivity, which impacted message file submissions to them and the subsequent sending of the clearing to the BoE.

    ***** On 8 September, there was a delay of 45 minutes to the first Faster Payments Service (FPS) settlement cycle. This was due to a FPS participant having insufficient funds in their settlement account. On 9 September, there was a 90 minute delay to LINK settlement, which was due to a technical issue at Vocalink and meant that the settlement required manual completion.

    ******The Mastercard clearing was delayed by a total of 32 minutes on 26 October which was due to a technical issue at Mastercard.

    Service availability Jan
    2020
    		 Feb
    2020
    		 Mar
    2020
    		 Apr
    2020     		May
    2020     		Jun
    2020     		Jul
    2020     		Aug
    2020     		Sept
    2020     		Oct
    2020    		 Nov
    2020     		Dec
    2020
    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.80% 100% 99.94% 100%
    		 100% 100%  100% 100%
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100%
    		 100% 100% 99.79% 100% 99.94% 100%
    		 100% 100%  100% 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 99.57%
    		 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    		 100%*** 100%  100%**** 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0
    		 0
    		 0 0 0 150 0 0 0  0  151*****
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100%* 100%
    		 100%
    		 100% 100%** 100% 100% 100%
    		 100% 100% 100% 100%

    * Enquiry Link was available, but some users experienced intermittent access on Monday 20 January between 06:00 and 07:56 due to a technical problem.

    ** Enquiry Link was available but some users experienced intermittent access on both 13 and 22 May due to a technical problem.

    ***Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on Friday 11 September (which required a Non Standard CREST Closure at the end of the day) and Monday 14 September. 

    ****Whilst the RTGS-CREST link was available, CREST itself experienced technical issues on 6 and 10 November.

    *****The Image Clearing System (ICS) clearing was delayed due to an issue with the ICS system which impacted the ICS participants’ ability to confirm the payments. Pay.UK fixed the issue and the clearing settled at 19.01 (2 hours 31 minutes late).

    Service availability Jan
    2019
    		 Feb
    2019    		 Mar
    2019    		 Apr
    2019    		 May
    2019    		 Jun
    2019    		 Jul
    2019    		 Aug
    2019    		 Sept
    2019    		 Oct
    2019    		 Nov
    2019    		 Dec
    2019
    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100%  99.50%  100% 100% 100%
    		 100%
    		 100%  100% 100%  100% 99.93% 
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 99.48%  100%
    		 100% 100%
    		 100%
    		 100%  100% 100%  100% 99.93%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 100%
    		 100%  100%
    		 100% 100%
    		 100%
    		 100%  100% 100%  100% 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0  13  0 0 0 0 0  0 0  0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100%
    		 100%  100%
    		 100% 100%
    		 100%
    		 100%   100% 100%  100% 100% 

     

    Service availability Jan
    2018
    		 Feb
    2018    		 Mar
    2018    		 Apr
    2018    		 May
    2018    		 Jun
    2018    		 Jul
    2018    		 Aug
    2018    		 Sept
    2018    		 Oct
    2018    		 Nov
    2018    		 Dec
    2018
    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 99.88% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 99.87% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    		 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%; 100% 100% 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

     

    Service availability Jan
    2017     		Feb
    2017     		Mar
    2017     		Apr
    2017     		May
    2017     		Jun
    2017     		Jul
    2017     		Aug
    2017     		Sept
    2017     		Oct
    2017     		Nov
    2017     		Dec
    2017
    1. RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 99.76% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 99.64% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.92% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.67% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%

     

    Service availability Jan
    2016     		Feb
    2016     		Mar
    2016     		Apr
    2016     		May
    2016     		Jun
    2016     		Jul
    2016     		Aug
    2016     		Sept
    2016     		Oct
    2016     		Nov
    2016     		Dec
    2016
    1.RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 100% 99.89% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100

    Service availability Jan
    2015     		Feb
    2015     		Mar
    2015     		Apr
    2015     		May
    2015     		Jun
    2015     		Jul
    2015     		Aug
    2015     		Sept
    2015         		Oct
    2015     		Nov
    2015     		Dec
    2015
    1.RTGS infrastructure for ‘urgent’ CHAPS settlement 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    2. RTGS infrastructure for ‘non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement 99.60% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    3. Ability of RTGS and the RTGS-CREST link to support settlement in CREST 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.58% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100%
    4. Delays to net settlement of retail payment systems (minutes) 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
    5. RTGS Enquiry Link 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 100% 99.64

Service disruptions

On 24 October, there was a 36 minute outage to RTGS which stopped CHAPS and CREST settlement and delayed the daily Cheque Imaging System clearing.

On 29 August 2023, there was a three-minute outage that impacted all RTGS settlement whilst the system automatically recovered from a component failure. The component in question automatically recovered as per its design.

On 14 August 2023, a technical issue prevented the RTGS service opening on time, impacting all RTGS settlement. RTGS remained closed between 6am and 12.20pm. The service operated as normal thereafter and all payments submitted to the Bank for settlement on 14 August were settled before the end of the day.

On 11 August 2023, Swift experienced an issue for all customers using their network via Alliance Connect. This resulted in Swift service unavailability of 11 minutes. This impacted CHAPS settlement, CREST DvP, interbank settlement of retail payment systems, and RTGS Enquiry Link.

On 12 April 2021, ’non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 6 minutes from 6am to 6.06am, due to a system configuration error. Non-urgent CHAPS settlement resumed at 6.06am. Settlement of urgent CHAPS payments was unaffected. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 22 July 2020, we undertook a contingency test with Link, requiring manual settlement of the clearing instruction. During the test there was a delay, but settlement was completed by 1.30pm. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 6 July 2020, the Bank experienced a 10 minute RTGS settlement delay. As a consequence of a SWIFT outage earlier in the day, there was an issue with our internal SWIFT infrastructure that led to a 10 minute outage of settlement while it was reset. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension.

On 14 May 2020 the failure of a network component at one of SWIFT’s European processing centres meant the loss of its messaging services within that zone. As a consequence, the Bank lost connectivity to the external SWIFT messaging service that supports CHAPS. SWIFT restored services by performing a failover to their alternative processing centre, but CHAPS urgent and non-urgent settlement was not available for 28 minutes while this was completed. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension. 

On 4 December 2019 at 11am there was an internal issue which paused RTGS settlement for 10 minutes. Settlement was restarted following internal investigations. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension. CREST settlement was unaffected.

On 20 March 2019 at 3.28pm there was a controlled stop of CHAPS settlement in the Real Time Gross Settlement service that resulted in transactions being suspended until 4.43pm when settlement was restarted following internal investigations. All settlement obligations were settled during the standard settlement day, without needing an extension.

On 19 February 2018, CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 18 minutes from 6am to 6.18am due to a minor operational issue that required manual intervention.  Urgent settlement is usually available from 6am to 6pm, non-urgent is usually available from 6am to 5.30pm. CREST and other settlements were unaffected.

On 4 August 2017, ’non-urgent’ CHAPS settlement was unavailable for 12 minutes from 6.07am to 6.19am, due to a minor issue with some of the Bank’s connections to the SWIFT network.  Non-urgent CHAPS settlement resumed at 6.19am. Settlement of urgent CHAPS payments was unaffected. All other RTGS services were unaffected.

On 5 June 2017, the RTGS Enquiry Link was unavailable for external users for 61 minutes, between 5.05am and 6.06am due to a minor internal issue. CHAPS payment processing and CREST settlement were unaffected.

On 13 March 2017, infrastructure for urgent CHAPS settlement and non-urgent CHAPS settlement was unavailable from 2.30pm, due to a SWIFT network issue. Urgent settlement was resumed after 40 minutes at 3.10pm. Non-urgent settlement was resumed after 60 minutes at 3.30pm. All other services were unaffected.

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This page was last updated 14 November 2023